Haynes Johnson was a terrific journalist who went on to become a terrific historian. I’ve always felt that journalists make great historians because they know how to write and keep a reader’s attention. From the Times obit…

Haynes Bonner Johnson was born in New York City on July 9, 1931. His mother, the former Emmie Ludie Adams, was a pianist; his father, Malcolm, was a newspaperman with The New York Sun. For The Sun, the elder Mr. Johnson won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize for Local Reporting for his 24-part series, “Crime on the Waterfront.”

This was turned into the greatly overrated movie “On The Waterfront.” Brando was great. But the director, Elia Kazan, is one of the worst “humans” ever to populate Hollywood. I suggest you read about all the careers Kazan destroyed by naming innocent names before H.U.A.C. Budd Shulman who wrote the screenplay also named names. Sucky movie made by even suckier people. More from obit…

That series, which exposed the unsavory, often violent alliance of labor unions and organized crime on New York’s docks, inspired “On the Waterfront,” the 1954 film starring Marlon Brando.

via Haynes Johnson, Journalist and Author, Dies at 81 – NYTimes.com.

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Children are our future. Education is more important than money. We can’t compete with China unless more kids go to college. Those are American values, right? And yet we lend money to bankers at far lower rates than we do students. Why? Because bankers control Washington and bankers want every educated American to start their adulthood being $100,000 indebted to bankers. How much of a fight can you put up against the system when your entire career is spent paying off college debt. College debt is turning our most educated into indentured servants who are too broke and too exhausted to fight these loansharks. Banks destroyed America in 2007, and instead of punishing them, we make them stronger. They create nothing and destroy everything. From USA Today…

A proposal by Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., to reduce interest rates on student loans has one big economic backer: Nobel Prize laureate Joseph Stiglitz.

via Nobel winner: Cut student loan rates.

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Ben Armbruster from Think Progress was on our show yesterday. He talks about the 60 Yemenis being held at Gitmo who are completely innocent. They have been in Gitmo for nearly ten years, and are supposed to be released but Congress has blocked it. For nearly ten years the United States has held 60 innocent men in a prison for no other reason than America doesn’t know what to do after admitting it made a mistake. This is from Joe Nocera in tonday’s New York Times…

The detainees are all in solitary confinement. They are shackled when they are taken to the shower. They cannot speak to their families unless they submit to that same repugnant body search.

As I said on today’s show, whenever our President speaks of closing Gitmo he says, “This is not who we are.” Mr. President? You promised to close Gitmo back in 2008. It’s been nearly five years. Gitmo is exactly who we are. More Nocera…

In other words, an already inhumane situation has become even worse on the watch of the president who claims to want to shut down the prison.

 

via Obama’s Gitmo Problem – NYTimes.com.

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The dumber we get here in America the easier it is for our politicians to lie and confuse us. Democracy requires a citizenry that understands civics, a citizenry that understands that you can’t judge a bill by its name. Americans die while Wayne LaPierre and the gun manufacturers bankrolling his lies get richer. From an editorial in today’s New York Times.

This kind of dissembling by gun control opponents has been rampant for years, but rarely have the National Rifle Association’s most captive lawmakers been so nakedly deceptive as in the weeks since public rage grew over the gun vote. Senator Kelly Ayotte, Republican of New Hampshire, also voted against the Manchin-Toomey measure,

All you need to ask your senator is, “Did you support Manchin-Toomey?” Any other gun control bill was designed to control people who want gun control…

and she immediately suffered the backlash of angry voters in her state. So she issued a statement saying “I support effective background checks” and reminding voters that she had backed the misleadingly named Protecting Communities and Preserving the Second Amendment Act — a measure that does nothing to close the loopholes for Internet or gun-show sales and that was, in fact, supported by the N.R.A. because it actually makes it easier to transport guns across state lines.

via Deception on Gun Background Checks – NYTimes.com.

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